27 March 2015

The Wasting of Colombia: Profiting from the War on Drugs While Destroying Integrity and Civilization

I was spending some time on the Drug War with my kids and
made use of this video. I found it provided a good overview but it's really
just the beginning. The War on Drugs has largely proved catastrophic for not
just American society, but for many in Latin America as well. They've been
plunged into violence, civil war and in some cases a reversion to feudalism
under the sometimes celebrated drug lords and in other cases the aristocratic
landowners.

It's a complicated tale of government empowerment, the
creation of new bureaucracies, massive expenditures, contracts for military
hardware, the intelligence community. Then of course there are the mercenaries
as well as the funding of foreign/proxy armies, and paramilitary groups.

It involves American corporations like Chiquita, Coca-Cola,
and numerous oil companies. It involves banking and money-laundering and shadow
budgets for groups like the CIA.

It is a massive racket, a grandiose scam, and the poor of
many societies are paying the price.

The old Supply and Demand argument doesn't work here, except
in this sense that it's been in the interest of some of these moneymakers to
see the street price escalate. And I'm not necessarily referring to the drug
lords. At the end of the day are we as a society willing to prosecute people
for behaviour they conduct behind closed doors? We tried Prohibition before and
it didn't work but instead led to a growth in corruption and organized crime.
This is ten-fold or maybe a hundred-fold.

The amount of money being spent to fund domestic law
enforcement, the private prison industry, the court system, all of it is just
staggering. It has harmed all of us as we continue to lose basic rights and the
police become more aggressive and draconian.

Outlawing street drugs forced the supply-demand chain into
the shadows and causes it to function on the black market. The repercussions
cannot be overstated as society and even the government is now caught in an
endless self-destructive cycle. Broken families and communities feed the
problem and the machine cannot be stopped. It's too big and has become
self-sustaining. The War itself has become a self-sustaining element of the
economy.

As Christians we are of course against intoxicating drugs
but we have to ask if people are better served by being locked up? Are drugs
their real problem? We can't support drug use but encouraging the government to
take this course is a dreadful and naive mistake.

As I watch videos like this and comb through articles and
other material I think of all the Christians involved in this work.

Are they building the Kingdom with their work? Does their
ignorance of the big picture let them off the moral hook? Are they accountable?
Can they do this with integrity? I couldn't. You have to wonder what interests
you are really serving. Certainly not the American people. As a Christian we
give no allegiance to any nation and instead must think in terms of humanity.
For that reason, and many others I could not participate at any level in the
war on drugs.

I also was reminded of the movie adaptation of Clancy's
"Clear and Present Danger" which tried to present the American
government's participation in the mess as the result of some misguided policy
planners and maybe some rogue elements within the government. The Americans sent
to Colombia are just a bunch of innocents, good upper middle-class types just
trying to serve their country, defend our way of life and fight the bad guys.
The way the American military action is presented is not only ridiculous in its
isolated contextualization but frankly offensive considering the American
footprint in the region and interference in Colombia's affairs. The story
presents the American involvement as something shocking and hidden. The
presence of American power is well known and has long been felt.

Jack Ryan CIA-hero to the rescue! As a lost person I used to
love Tom Clancy and movies like that. Today when I watch them I have a very
different response. Instead of giving the public something to think about and
reflect upon we're handed another piece of propaganda. Sure, the US president
is made to look bad. He's corrupt and immoral. We all know that. But it's the
CIA guys, the soldiers, the good "working class" of the US
government, these are the people to be admired, right?

Or are they the one's that really bear the most
responsibility? The men sitting in offices are removed from the action. The
bankers look at their numbers, the politicians live in a world of polls and
media appearances. But who really knows what is happening? Who can put the
pieces together if they choose to? It's all the people in between the top of
the hierarchy and the drug runners and peasants they're fighting . They see the
corruption and the suffering. Maybe they don't. Increasingly I am convinced
people only see what they want to see.

Meanwhile the pesticides keep raining down on Colombia,
people are sick and dying. They are disenfranchised and their lives are destroyed.
In desperation they pick up a gun to fight the Yankee and their proxy whores
based in Bogota. They fight the American corporations that from their
perspective are inseparable from US governmental policy. But at least we as
Christians can sing:

And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up next to you
And defend Her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt
I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

It just brings a tear to your eye doesn't it? Pardon my
cynicism but I have to say that watching the video stirred some real
indignation within me. I am well aware of all of these things. I've spent years
reading and looking into this stuff. But there are times it really hits you. I
suppose as I grow older and look at my children, especially as they're now
teenagers, it all affects me more. I think of military recruiters and I get
angry when I think of the lies... lies I once fell for. I guess I was one of
the people in the thick of things that wasn't supposed to think about what I was
doing and what I was a part of. I had to get out. It made me ill to wear that
uniform. I was a stooge.

I think about lives uprooted and destroyed. Every day I
increasingly realize the extent of corruption in our society and our world.
When I listen to political leaders that doesn't really upset me. I know what
they are and what they're about. But when I hear Christian leaders promote and
defend this whole system which is little more than a paradigm of theft and death,
it really upsets me.

I'm not a Dispensationalist. I'm not looking for a global
government but look at all of these Christian leaders who in their foolishness
think it's the United Nations and have missed the scope, power and evil of the
US Empire... I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. They are such blind
guides and if a Globalist Antichrist were to arise I am convinced that in their
spiritual delusion they would be the last to see it. Rather they would be the
first to sign up! Or they would join with Hitler to oppose Ban Ki-moon who in
the end is just a pathetic figure who wields no power and is in reality a
supplicant who lives off the crumbs the US government tosses to him.

There's a lot here, but if the video stirs you at all,
you'll benefit from wading through some of these links. They're just a starting
point. Obviously I cannot verify everything in every article. People say you
shouldn't trust Wikipedia. In reality, don't trust any of it unless you can
corroborate sources. It takes some time and effort but you can't start to put
together a larger picture of how things work.

There are quite a few figures of interest in the video, from
Ingrid Betancourtand Noam Chomsky to
Alfred McCoy. McCoy is an interesting figure who has done a great deal of
research on Drugs and War in other capacities, viz. Southeast Asia and the
famous French Connection. He's also convincingly argued what happened at Abu
Ghraib reflected a decades old policy at work in the US government and the
pictures themselves are proof that the torture was implemented policy, not the
result of some rogue soldiers from Appalachia getting carried away. He ties in
the recent torture revelations with Project Phoenix in Vietnam, the policies
utilized by Marcos in the Philippines and the Shah in Iran.